‘Great Big Ideas’ seminar to go on hiatus

After being taught for three consecutive terms, “Great Big Ideas” will be taking a break from Yale.

The popular Yale College seminar co-taught by Provost and President-elect Peter Salovey and Adam Glick ’82 — a New York-based real estate investor and founder of The Floating University — will not be offered again until spring 2014, when current Dean of Admissions Jeffrey Brenzel will replace Salovey as the second instructor. The class follows an untraditional format where students watch prerecorded lectures on a diverse array of academic topics by high-profile scholars, including Brenzel and Yale professors Tamar Gendler and Paul Bloom each week prior to class.

The seminar — which has 21 members but has repeatedly attracted hundreds of shoppers — then uses its allotted class time for discussions, which often carry over into dinner conversations afterward. Mohammad Salhut ’14, who shopped the class three times before being accepted this fall, said he thought the exposure to different disciplines was ideal, especially for undecided freshmen and sophomores.

“Here’s a class that introduces you to everything and tells you to take your pick, [and] almost every student in the class loves [Glick] and loves the class, and nobody comes out saying it was a bad experience,” Salhut said.